Washington DC - President Donald Trump's health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave mixed messages Wednesday on whether children should be vaccinated and defended a brutal series of budget cuts in a grilling by congressional Democrats.

The hearing – ostensibly about Trump's 2026 budget proposal – offered Democrats a chance to pressure Kennedy on layoffs, budget cuts, and a measles outbreak that has killed three children and sickened more than a thousand.

Asked in the House of Representatives if he would vaccinate his own child for measles, the long-time vaccine skeptic initially declined to respond.

"If I answer that question directly, it will seem like I'm giving advice to other people, and I don't want to be doing that," Kennedy told Democratic Representative Mark Pocan during the session, which was interrupted by protesters.

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Pocan responded that Kennedy oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a premier US government public health service, and therefore advising on vaccines is "kind of your jurisdiction."

Later, Kennedy said he was "recommending" vaccination as "the best way to stop the spread."

But asked the same question about chicken pox and Polio, Kennedy said "I don't want to give advice."

The globally renowned US health agencies and centers for scientific research are facing deep workforce and budget cuts under a plan to slash the federal government, led by Trump's mega-billionaire backer, Elon Musk.

Kennedy defended the elimination of 20,000 positions from the Department of Health and Human Services – nearly a quarter of the workforce – and denied reports that key programs and funding, such as cancer research, have been cut.

"We intend to do more, a lot more, with less," he said, claiming to be staunching an "unsustainable hemorrhage" of spending that would have "disastrous health consequences."

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Democrat Rosa DeLauro suggested that Kennedy was illegally reducing the department without congressional approval.

"I believe you are promoting quackery," DeLauro said.

"The United States remains the sickest developed nation," Kennedy said. "Clearly, something is structurally and systematically wrong with our approach."